Now really, now really. This is another episode of Really No Really, the podcast that makes Peter Tilden and Jason Alexander examine things that have us say to each other or.
Perhaps on our own under yeah the Wolves, Really no really, that's exactly and this one shed launched right into this one.
I saw as long as kind of fascinating this This both intrigues me and freaks me out a little bit, but yes, by all means. So it started.
I've always been fascinated about like the steam in New York City.
Yeah, because if any major city, you know, there's not only is there steam coming out of the sewer grades and the manholes, but there's occasionally you'll see like a pipe, like a like a yeah, you know, a FLEXI show.
So I started looking at that stuff and then I see this headline it's manhole Explosion Season in New York City and a beautiful song. I think, I think that's a Trials act. And so then I start looking that up and I go, what's that about. From two thousand and nine to twenty eighteen, Yeah, there were four thousand dispatches by the Fire Department New York for manhold explosions. And that's among the forty five thousand emergency manhold incidents.
So this is when a manhole literally blows off up out of the street and lands god knows where as it did in the Bronx and flipped the Cadillac escalade, blew out windows April ten, twenty twenty two. Three explosions in Times Square February eighteenth to in Midtown. But not to be left out, Yonkers has got their own. So I go, what the what.
If the Free Prise Yonkers isn't breaking the record?
What is going on underground? So I started looking that up a bit, and what you find out is there are two hundred and sixty four thousand manholes in New York City just waiting, just waiting for their moment.
Manholes. That's not even potholes, that's not manholes.
One hundred and five steam pipes. Then you got ninety eight thousand miles of electrical.
One hundred and five of those pipes that come up out of the ground where I say we sometimes see steam underground.
And by the way, only one hundred and five, but big ones, and they go for miles and miles and miles, okay, and on and on and on, and the amazing thing about New York City and what's underground is I didn't realize the sewage pipes used to dump raw sewage directly into the Hudson.
You didn't realize that until wait, wait did you stand? In?
What year did they stop? When?
Do you think they stop recently?
Yes? Yeah, like twenty twelve, nineteen eighty six, yeah, yeah, And by me, how I know that my apartment was a block from the Hudson.
I am well aware. They used to put a ross sewage in the Hutston, and.
Then people used to it was an annual race swim around Manhattan Island in the Hudson. Yeah, and a lot of those people got sick.
I bet I'll tell you something else. No pipes in this I once went into the boat pond in Central Park for a commercial.
I got appatitis. I was just in not even in the Hudson. So yeah. And the other thing. The other thing is some of these pipes under New York City, Yeah, pre date the Civil War.
Yeah, sure, yeah, I'm.
Sure wouldn't put in there when we're here.
I don't think the pipe was wooden.
So oh they have, wouldn't they have wooden? Wooden pipes? Under New York that they had to convert that. They started with, Oh yeah, what's a wooden and we'll talk about that. We have a guest on, So we wanted to get a guest on who knows what's under cities not just New York, but under cities in Italy, there's all kinds of in France, there's like catacombs and skulls. There's a lot of stuff down there. You got the under guy that you don't know, so I got the
under guy underdogor Don Waldman is joining us. Don is one of TV's most trustworthy and adventurous history enthusiasts.
He writes here, by the way, that's not a big category.
It's not a category at all.
Category already you're gonna see not a lot of respect. But we love you're you're really something else.
Thank you.
Posted hosted a lot of stuff on the Travel Channel, and a lot of it has to do with history, mysteries in the museum, monumental mysteries, greatest mysteries, beyond the Unknown, dark tales, mysteries for even me, mystery mysteries. So, but Don, you've traveled all over the world and you've seen it all. Can we welcome to the upon.
Thank you so much. It's really really an honor to be here.
Now, don't get crazy.
You're a handsome and powerful man, don and we appreciate.
It, all right.
So if you can, why Bob wi, how creepy is it just in general going under cities?
Is that is that it depends on the space, you know.
Uh.
This basically comes from the fact of the matter that in old times it was a lot easier to knock something down and bury it instead of as we do today, carry it away, you know, And so you end up with layers upon layers of civilization in these older areas of the world that are still there, you know, and when you go down and look for them, you find those older versions of whatever city you're standing in. This is a very very lively subject that goes from you know,
ancient man up until modern times. Because the same thing happens today. We build foundations that we build upon, we dig things with tunnel boring machines. It's just this huge realm underground that once you get access to it and start looking around, it just kind of blows your mind about the incredible innovations, the determination of human beings to do what they do and create the structures that they need to do, you know, to build their buildings.
And are you talking about like, I'll focus on New York for a moment, so when we talk about an underground city, are we talking about the real I realized that there are working subway tunnels and they're working.
Exactly piety utilities.
But is there also, like what I find remnants of old New York New York?
Oh yeah, yes. There's a very famous story from the nineteen eighties. His first name is Bob lovely Man, who took up a radio contest. There had been a legend about a masonically built like the Masons, building a tunnel under Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, and this tunnel had been dug, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, but it
had been sealed off by modern times. And this radio guy, sort of crazy shockjock guy, challenged people this new world of urban exploration, go find this tunnel and we'll give you a prize. And this guy named Bob, who was a guy in his twenties at the time, decided to take this upon himself and he found out where this tunnel was, and it indeed had been buried with regular
old sand. But he and his pals dug up a manhole and then started digging, and they found the tunnel, and it had been sealed off with concrete or a cinderblock wall in World War One times because of their worries about the German espionage and so forth. But once you broke down that wall, you got through to what was probably three blocks long of old train tunnel, like old big brick, big stone tunnel that was down there and at the end of which it had also been collapsed.
They suspected that the original train that went to Long Island out to the farmlands of Long Island was buried in there as well. There's even rumors of all kinds of crazy stuff back there. It was very much used by murder inc As a place to deposit dead bodies and so forth, and that had been buried in that had been covered up until Bob found it, and I went down with him the first time that he was able to go back as an older man. He was very ill, and he knew that it was really a
funny day. He knew the manhole. He says, I know that all the gas guys don't worry about it. He brings his own little cones and circles the cones in the middle of a regular day, and we said, public, can we really do this? And it's all being shot veritee with my cameraman and everything, and we pry open the manhole, pretending we're gas guys, and we go down
in this place. He hadn't been in for maybe twenty years, and we climbed down and sure enough you'd walk in and there is this enormous tunnel that no one ever goes there and nobody ever knows is even there, and it was just an incredible thing to see. So that was one of many many pieces of infrastructure that are in New York. What you mentioned before, Peter, the idea of these wooden pipes. They just dug one up not
too long ago. The original Aaron Burr water system that's underneath the Financial District still, which is a whole big story.
I mean, and don the water pipes or gravity, right, So they like tilted in a way that they had the run down.
Even he doesn't how long could that run?
So it was a story. It's it's Aaron Burr, the creepy guy of history, right, and he basically conned. I mean this is wait, my friend, I'm sorry, and very well, and very well. Aaron Burke got a contract from the New York City, from New York City to deliver fresh water for the first time. And you know, they were suffering in those early days of the eighteen hundreds, and he guaranteed that he would deliver two hundred some plus outlets through this new system of water that was going
to be pumped from the Bronx River. And he got this whole thing contracted, and he built the system and it was all made of hollowed out wooden logs that were all connected, and that was all down there. And so then he just took the money and ran because in the contract he had that he could use the money for his own banking purposes. So it was a total con job. Only a little bit of the water was ever delivered, not from the Bronx but from from the old source that was there in the East village.
Did not see that, and.
And he took that money and he started his own company called the Manhattan Company, and that Manhattan Company eventually becomes Chase Manhattan. So that's the bank chat and oh my god, there my first.
Really and the connection in the show fraud and everything else that is in the Hamilton show. I would love to see Manuel rap about's make.
A wooden pipe get together with him? Stuck go then I don't know right?
Your water is not there? And either am I? So wow? And that continues today? Is it true? There? Okay, I'm going to hit you with a couple of things. The river down down downstream underground there is called snot stickles because it's underground, snotstickles because it's got back to Is that accurate?
Oh god?
Yeah?
And the little lag tights that come from the from the drips through the ceiling and stuff, all the limestone that comes through. It's gross discussed.
So you go down? Are you in like a has man?
Sometimes ends on who I'm interviewing and what we're doing and what we got away with. You know, this is the realm of urban explorers who've been doing this forever. There's a guy named Steve who's been very famously doing this. He's now a professor of city history and stuff. You know, there have been people who've been, you know, going through this realm forever, and we sort of jumped on their coattails doing this as a TV show. It all started
with Istanbul. You know, Istanbul was very famous in the nineties and early aughts because they started building a subway tunnel in Istanbul and modernizing the city, and all they kept doing is having to stop all this construction because they've run into yet another archaeological, amazing find. You know, the famous Basilica that they that they opened up was
because of that subway construction. And it was at that time that people that I work with, this great production company, one of whom is a Turk, said hey, this seems like a really good idea for a show, and I said yep, and so off we went. And it turns out the entire world is full of these kinds of mysteries that are that are revealed as soon as you dig down below and find them. The best of all of them is an Acco do you know Aka, it's
also called Okra in northern Israel. It's around Haifa, oh yes, yes, yes, in insane place where you have the original Crusader castle, which is there from like twelve hundred and it's real like it's the hospitality of the French guys, and they've got flirt delis and all that that was buried by the Ottomans who took it over, of course, the Muslim who came over and they buried in sort of symbolically as well as practically built their city on top of that.
And then the Brits come along later on and build something else on top of that. And so it's this multi level city that they just started digging up in the nineties. And you can go all the way down and that's tourism and that's great and it's clean and easy. But all around the city are people with their own little basement entrances into this place, so they're very dangerous.
But you can literally go into people's basements and then go two levels down and be sort of pushing things aside and crawling into the top of a doorway into a twelve hundred year old you know, from the year twelve hundred, into this, into this castle system. It's incredible.
And are these are are these? Is there a danger to going in?
Very much?
So, very much so. I was not allowed by that archaeologist that day who took me down. It was a he's the head of the whole thing. He said, no, I'm going in there. You're not going to do it. Because the gases that get released, you know, the mold and everything else that gets into your into your system is very dangerous and it's amazing. It's simply amazing that I did not get sick in some major way from the bat caves that we did and stuff like that. All the the guano and things like that, the rats
and everything. It's it's disgusting.
Yeah, don you gotta start spending some time above ground. So let's finish with New York real quick. More people. I've heard stories about mold people. I read about a guy who met them old people and the woman who's living down there for twenty eight years, and they hear from other people. Yeah, it's real, total bs. It doesn't it doesn't exist.
So yes, I you know, to a degree, I think it does. I think it wasn't as sensational as that was reported to be. I mean what that about was really like Times Square and the unused tunnels of the subway system. There's a lot of those. I mean down in the village there's that new uh, you know, the the underground version of the high line is being developed into a into a park, you know, where they use the original subway tunnel down by city Hall and stuff.
And I don't even even know how far along that is, but it's a great idea. But there are all kinds of tunnels that never get used again. I've toured a lot of them up in Boston, for example, the Boston sub with a t system has a ton of dead end tunnels that are just there for storage and stuff. And you know, you can imagine how that works. You know, they dig these things and then say, oh, never mind, we're not going that way, and that that space just
doesn't get attended to. A lot of these public spaces, and I mean public by you know, back into kingdoms and so forth, are just there because public money was available to do them. But then it runs out, and so nobody goes down there ever again until somebody finds it and discovers it and does it a television show on it.
And where about sunken boat? I mean, are here there are seventeenth century boats underground in there. I think under New York there was a room, a mirrored room that they found somewhere underground.
They found, uh, you know, when they did the World the original excavation for the first foundation of the World Trade Center, they found boats down there because that had been the original you know, shoreline. So much of Manhattan shoreline is is you know, backfill. It's all filled in as recently as the seventies, I guess. But so you're gonna find inevitably things down there that that are from the early Dutch days and all that kind of stuff. It's it's growing.
And it done. That's interesting. So I did not know that about the actual shoreline of New York. Oh yeah, New York Island has been enhanced through My god.
There used to be a beach, you know on where the where the World Trade Center is or that whole what's it called the you know with.
A Freedom Plaza.
Yeah, that whole area with the where American Express used to be in all that, Yeah, that's all filled in. That's a that's an extended shoreline. And so the original shoreline is under where the World Trade Center was sitting in her Freedom Tower, I guess is. And so all that is is extended, you know.
So are they well, is that a viable technology?
Oh?
Yeah, I mean I'm.
Putting in the car before the horse. All the reports are is that the water levels are rising around Manhattan and that particularly lower Manhattan is in grave danger of being underwater in the next decade to two. Is do we have the technology to keep raising sort of the structure of the lower part of the.
It's just money, you know, That's what that That's where the government comes in, and how much are they going to spend to raise that that shoreline even more than they already did. You go to Prague, for example, You walk around Prague. The Jewish quarter of Prague is twelve feet higher than the original city, and you can go into many many buildings down there and find where they actually lifted up the city. You stand next to the Tiber river in Rome. Everybody walks along that river. Well,
that huge wall behind you is the raised city. It's thirty feet high. So that new city, the modern city, sits on top of that, that whole underground, which is the original spaces of each level of that city. When they raised it higher and higher, that's typically what is done. It's more of a practical measure just for flood control, mostly of those old cities, because they were constantly getting flooded out, So of course that's what they would do.
But that's an old technique for human society, is just to raise the level of ground, and.
They cannot do that to a place like Venice, Italy because there is no that's.
A whole different thing.
It's like a floating Yeah, there's so much water.
I mean it's so much. It's just open water. That's the whole idea that they didn't have streets, they just had canals, and so it's a different kind of challenge. I think.
Yeah, don we're also seeing now across the country is major structured big buildings. Yeah, there are sinking, sinking buildings that are tilting buildings there sinking. What's and with your knowledge of what's under stuff? Yeah, you go, uh oh, there are kind of comes under there. There's movable grounds. Yeah, there's a fault line. I would get out of Apartment three.
Scene now I know. Well, I mean this is this is happening all the time.
I start researching where they are and you go, oh wow, this is not a one one.
Where are you thinking of what's the what's the area?
Well, the one they said even in the marina out here they're concerned about some of those buildings starting to sink. Well, the one that they had to knock down and the one's next to them in Florida, there's something. Yeah, and because of rising sea levels, it's also altering even inland. What's going on?
My wife and I just bought an eighteen hundred cottage on Martha's Vineyard that the engineer just explained to me that the foundation is rotting away and and that's why the porch is tilting that way, you know, downwards. And I said, what do you mean it's rotting away? And he said, well, that's every building in the world eventually, is that happens to So that's why you have to go under and repoor foundations every hundred years or so.
So it happens to everything, and it's it's just a matter of time.
So do I always own it?
When?
Why didn't I do the right investigation before?
People?
Don't you mind the house for My inspector said, good to go, And.
I know, but this man spends half his life underground.
It doesn't have a basement. That's the problem.
So of all the cities, and I know this is tough because I'm looking at the list of Boston, Jerusalem, Hoshiman City, roam l A. What was the most eye opening event?
I would tell you that my favorite story of underground is Ethiopia. I really uh learned so much from it and had an incredible cultural experience going there. It wasn't dangerous then. It's now dangerous to go to where we went to because there's been a huge war there over the last couple of years. But it's a It's a place called t Gray and to Gray is the northernmost province of Ethiopia. Ethiopia being an amazing country that everyone should try to get to in their lifetimes. It's an
incredible place. But to Gray is on your way to Egypt. You know, it's that whole kind of historical world up there, and the Tigrans like the Egyptians who were so good with stone, obviously, and this place becomes very interesting actually because of Christianity. It's a weird thing, but the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is one of the most intense fundamentalist churches in the world, and that's because of the Nine Saints. They were called the Nine Saints were these Christian prophets
who came down from our missionaries. I guess who came down from the Eastern Orthodox realm of Christianity in you know, after the Council of chalcetup In. I think four hundred, and there was a big conflict in that early time of Christianity. Was Jesus Christ a divine god from the beginning or was he a man who became divine? It sounds like who cares at this point, But back then
it was really important. And so the church up above, you know, up in Turkey, Istanbulant Constantinople went with the with the Duophicite, I think it's called, and the Monophysites had to go away, and so they went down to Ethiopia out of them and they started what was called the rock carved churches. And these are in places like
Lollibella and further north into Gray. They are incredibly complicated engineering that's done from carving the rock that's underground, and there's in Lollibella, this is a World Heritage Site, very famous. There's eleven rock carved churches that will blow your socks off as you walk around inside of them, and they're used. This is an active religious site. People make pilgrimages to
this place. But literally below ground level you're seeing a two story tall building that is intricately carved inside and out of the stone that was there only once, like they had to make it perfect from the from the top to the bottom. As they went, it didn't like there's no way to it other than that. And you just can't believe what you're seeing. It's so astonishing that when we did this, I don't know it was two
thousand and eight, I guess it was. I thought the next year there would be Neon signs and Americans would be flying over. I just couldn't. I can't. I still can't believe that I tell people this and they don't know about it. It's the most gobsmacking place I've ever been in my life.
Wow, I just want to talk to Peter for a second. Don't take a sip of coffee or something. I was going, Did you hear the terms and the dates? This guy's throwing up? This guy's there. I think he read some of those books behind him. I thought you just got a TV guy, you know, like a front man, a beard. I didn't know you got like a real is a real guy sorr like Mike Rowe who just dabbles, you know, milk milks so hoarse.
For a second.
Yeah, I got he's going down in places where no one should go and learning terms and phrases couldn't. Would I go down? Would I go down there?
You would love it? I'm not kidding that, Yeah, I was.
I actually am fascinated. I went through. You probably know this tunnel. There's some sort of ancient aqueduct in Jerusalem. I believe it is. That it's still functioning today and you can tour through.
A city of David through it. The city of Davis.
Oh my god, the City of David aqueduct.
Yeah, that's where you get your carbonated water.
Exactly.
That tunnel goes down into the into the famous pond where apparently Jesus you know, did one of his miracles. And it was also near where Solomon was anointed, you know, on the rock that he was anointed on. I mean it's amazing. Yeah, you know what.
I get nervous in the Budapest subway. So I can't even imagine going where you went. And I'm looking at you going. You're probably one of the luckiest guys that you take on those challenges because you've gone just about everywhere.
I have had a lot of travel.
I gotta ask you a lesser, Okay, So here's this is almost embarrassing to ask, but I got to get it. Out of the way. All of these cities always do, especially in New York. Alligators or crocodiles are below. Have you ever seen in any city now? Because it's always a kid throughout the thing flushed it and now they're down there. Ever see one?
No, never there. They don't exist.
They're definitive.
There are, of course those stories of people's pythons and all that, but I have not myself seen one. I did wrestle an alligator for another show that I did, but that's another story.
Whoa, whoa, whoa? Hold on a second down?
You alone? Are you and a couple of guns?
And we don't a hobby you're sitting is called we haven't lunched. Let me here's go wrestle. I'll be back in twenty How.
Does that happen?
It was an alligator wrestling quote unquote place you know, down in the outside of Miami where you can go and do it yourself if you want. But you have to, by the way, insurance forms to fill out.
Is it a one armed guy who's just come on in it?
Very expensive insurance form as a matter of fact.
So wait, wait, do they say there's your It's just like a rodeo. You go, okay, give me twenty bucks.
There's your alligator now, so.
You can't do it. But if you, if you were doing a television show that promoted them, they would help help you figure out how to do it. I sat on the back of an alligator and I carefully grasped his snout, holding his his mouth shut. This was a twelve foot alligator, I suppose, and then I slowly bent it backwards and I kissed it on the lips and then put it back. And that was the stunt. And it was observed and advised upon by it a so called expert who was letting me.
You know what happens when I do that with an expert, something bad happens. And every time I've ever tried anything parasailing anything in my life, here's what I hear. Never saw that happen before. Yeah, no longer.
Way back all the nice things I said about there, because this guy thinks alligators have lips too, But I'm just.
Going on underground. It's like nothing for him. Kiss they have lips the top of the head. You don't know what's amazing to me about those like out here, you go to a carnival and they have the ride as this big and insurance of that. But in Florida it's one of those alligator wrestling places. That's the most insane thing you can do, and you're just begging for for problems.
A lot of that in Florida. You know, it's it's Florida.
That's probably that's in a retirement, by the way, which is really odd.
Non I want to go. I want to get back to just one other thing, because we touched on it briefly, but I don't know that I heard an absolute answer. So are there generally are there segments of a population that are are living in the space God, yes, even because they're homeless or they're no.
I'm glad you asked. Over in Turkey, in the center part of Turkey is a place called Cappadocia, very famous. I mean this place you can take a balloon ride in the morning. It's it's a you know, a big tourism area. But the fairy towers they call them, are creations due to erosion. It's a long story, but they're amazingly pointed. Places with with that are easily dug out by hand. I mean not easily, but you know, you
can do it. And so over centuries they have dug these places out and they're sort of hollowed out and and they were traditionally homes for people to live in. Over time they've been squatted in and and and sort of civilized as a modern police people have stoves and stuff like that in them. And and it's it's very much not the place you want to live, you know, in our lives, but it is a place of shelter and warmth for people. And and I've seen it all over the place, you know. It's it's the.
Equivalent you know, like snels.
Yeah, the equivalent of any kind of you know, putting a tent next to the highway ramp or something like that. But but in this case, it's an ancient shelter that was used for people like that. Of course, nobody really wants to live like that, but it's done to that end.
Because Peter and I are probably going to discuss this a little bit later. Do you see a future where instead of building up, we start building.
Down already happening. I mean, it's a no brainer that that's where this all goes to. When climate becomes too difficult and when congestion is too much and the population grows even more. It will be worldwide. It will be more easily done than it is now. Elon musk Is still is already talking about building highways underground. Of course you can do it. The tunnel boring machine is a well trod territory. Now it's engineering that works all over
the place, and we can talk about that. The new technology is mostly tunnel boring machines that work, you know, if you stand on it. First of all, I'll explain. There's a big rotating blade that's bigger than you are tall. It's a you know, two people tall, and it's circular, and it turns and it pushes through the earth, and it literally carves as it goes, and that material is
carried out by a conveyor belt. The general machines I've been on have been three hundred, you know, one hundred to more feet long, and so you're seeing all that dirt go away as you're standing there. You're also watching the wall move. I mean that's literally how fast this thing goes. Inches are moving past you at any kind of moment, and and after a day they can do five feet a day. And so it takes you know,
weeks only to dig a huge tunnel. And so that is happening all over the world and already has in other ways. The sand you know, the sand hogs have been doing it under New York for a century or more.
So, yes, and it doesn't destabilize the ground, not at all.
In fact, it's it's that is not even a factor because nothing that deep matters. And also it's circular, so that's so perfectly you know, and just geometrically or whatever.
Forces amazing, amazing, Hey, before we go, you know, the Steven Spielberg movies are always find these tunnels with skulls and stuff. Yeah, and and in catagoms and a lot of skeletons, miles of skeletons.
There are like that, Oh my god, yes, yes, everywhere, I mean pre Columbian stuff. All around in South America, you'll find all kinds of burial sites underground. And you know, you realize, I don't you know, I don't go to these places unless I'm working. You know, the average person isn't going to want to spend a lot of effort and time and money to find out of the way places. So out of the way places exist everywhere, and they're
barely visited but by locals. So if you go, like I have, to these places, you're astonished at how much stuff exists in these caves and on shelves and oh there's another skull. You kind of get bored of it, frankly, because there's just so much. And you're talking about hundreds, if not thousands of years of people just throwing stuff away and putting it away or burying it or anything like that. It's it's both moving and like, oh god,
we've been here for a while. You know, it's a astonishing factory.
And Moscow done Moscow? Were you welcomed underground or was that tough to do?
Moscow was interesting. This was the two thousand and eight, so we were not, you know, doing what we are doing now in terms of we were getting along in those days. Nonetheless, there was still a lot of obvious Cold War tension in the air. Several experiences like we did Ukraine, which had a lot of the Russian population against us there, and we were just trying to tell heroic stories about Soviet Soviets and World War Two. I'll tell you it's another one of those things that every
American should see is the Moscow Moscow subway system. It's just amazing and the complete opposite of the New York subway system. It's beautiful, it's clean, it's extraordinary and grand. It has sculptures and art and it just blows your mind. And it's and it works. You know, it's incredible.
Yeah, but they don't have Broadway.
They don't have broad I know where you're going, and I feel the same way. There's a human quality to the New York City subway, which I really like. And you know, oh it's human.
But you don't see somebody their nose out on the Moscow subway, which I did in New York.
It is every time it's painted by him.
Yeah. Yeah, I didn't realize leving in Philadelphia that when you go to New York and take a subway that you don't use tissues. You just hold one nobody.
Yeah.
Wow.
Sure.
They also don't have bathrooms on the cars. But so you know, there's this based between the cars.
I've seen it. I've seen it does.
Then there's the Philadelphia subway system.
Oh my god, hey hey hey, hey, yeah, okay, before you go, what's under Philly my hometown?
Not too much good? You know, you got the Old City and then uh, you know, I did the water system. I will tell you that the Schookle underneath of the underneath the Art Museum right behind there one of the original water systems of the War of America and a real product of you know that a colonial engineering. Ben Franklin, I'm named for Ben Franklin. My middle name is Franklin. So I'm very proud of Philly in those regards. I'm even Quaker, believe it or not. There you go, oh yeah, hey.
Don what's what's the one you haven't gotten to that you will?
You know what I haven't done Brazil enough. You know, there's a ton of stuff in Brazil that's extraordinary, and in general South America. You know, I think that that's Argentina, all of that area. For some reason, we never really got down to doing enough of that stuff. We did a bit in Peru which scratched the surface, no pun intended. It was one of the most leading Stanford guy, a
Stanford archaeologist. That's one of my favorite parts of the job is that I run into these scientists who have been working for you know, their entire careers and their legends and their worlds, and there they are, you know, into their up to their gills and whatever project they're doing, and nobody ever knows they're there except their students, their graduate students. And suddenly you meet this man who is revered in his world and knows everything about everything. It's credible.
If you have a minute more, I need to tell you the story about what this one archaeologist found in northern Peru. If you go to Peru, you generally go to the southern part of Peru. That's the Inca Trail, that's all the big, glamorous Machipichu and all that sort of thing. The northern part of Peru is less known, and that's the Chimu civilization. And it's an an equally grand,
amazing thing. And it was where an archaeologist who was working there, a Peruvian, was called by a pizzeria owner in this beachside surfing town a few years ago and said, we're finding bones in this empty lot. My kids keep coming back with them, and my dog brought back a skull. I think there's something over there. And this archaeologist was very busy on his own work down the road, just a mile down the road, on this major excavation, and
he ignored the call for three different calls. He told me. The story is, we did this on TV. And so we met him in this town and he walked me to that vacant lot, which is where he discovered the largest child sacrifice in the world and in history that has ever been discovered, some two hundred plus children who had been all killed in one particular event. And the reason that they had been sacrificed was because there had
been a huge amount of rain had come in. And they know this from the flooding and from the geology that they were able to excavate, and that this sacrificial event happened because the political elite had to prove to the common people that they were going to do something about this terrible suffering that they were all doing. All
the crops were being killed and everything else. So they pooled all these kids from around the whole region and came in and slaughtered them, and one fell swoop, and so you find all these holes in the ground and all these bodies one after another over this whole period
of time. That is like unbelievable in this world to go into and see and understand how ancient man dealt with things dealt with, but even practically politically, and it's a fascinating historical understanding of mankind through the underground, through the spaces below. Wow, I could Yeah, I don't Wow, I could talk and talk about this. I'm sorry.
I really fascinated.
You are thrilled to have as you're invited to every dinner party we ever have. The most interesting but the funniest thing is when we go back to how we started the interview. Of course he's doing it in the basement of his house.
Yeah, that's where, But you know, it's also it just makes me think, I can't remember what I was talking to. Said that they they didn't want to They had the opportunity to buy a piece of property near a cemetery, and they said, I don't want to do that.
I mean, I want to be I don't want to live where there's bodies buried. I went the planet Earth. Yeah we are, we're all building on the bones.
Of you know, and the notion that if we just tunnel down a little bit. I mean, I'm fascinated because you were talking about doing found we probably have to do some foundation work on my house. And I'd love to know what's ten feet down under my house. I bet there's some really cool stare down there.
I really thought what Jason was going to do was say have down one because I really need to. Who recommends about don you were? You're really a joy man and life must be Are you on the move all the time? Or does the family go it's enough with the underground.
Now I'm I'm podcasting like you. I'm doing my underground in my basement like this, but no, it's a pause right now. I'm pitching a new series about this. I really believe in it. It's a it's an endlessly fascinating thing that that there's way more of than I can even tell you, uh to explore.
So you know it's well, you know what you just where the series ever takes celebrities. I know Peter would love to go.
Right, you know, going I went down to the amazing thing is And it's funny you ended with that story even though it's it's chilling. I didn't when we got you on. I wanted you because of what's underground and where you've been, what you've seen, But you hit us with that as the last story, and you go, oh wow, peeling away the layers underground also shows your decisions people may yeah sorry, politics at the time, the religion of the time, and how they lived, and it tells your history.
Because you don't know our history, you're apt to repeat it so that it's a really unique perspective.
Sorry for the downer story, but yeah, no, no.
No textbooks and certain pints of the guys you really just erase that. That's fine, it doesn't exist.
You don't exist on you were never here. As if you were never here. Thank well, you are joy, you really are a joy. Tell us what you're working on now.
The podcast I do is called American History Hit. It's for history hit dot com and it's a it's a twice a week Mondays and Thursdays they release a new episode and it's deep dives on American history, which is my one of my great passions of life. So that's that's what I'm occupied on all the time these days.
So you're looking for the o whows that people don't necessarily know.
Underneath it's more of a one oh one course on on American history. It's like it's deep, I just did the right.
The amazing how how people don't know the one oh one.
Stuff I just did the right brothers I today, just a minute an hour ago, and I couldn't believe how little I knew about Orville and Wilbur Wright.
Amazing. Orville was always on the left, wasn't He was always on the left.
Never were belt I mean, we know this is our extra area of expertise because.
Of his left hand through with his right hand.
That was very strange and cursed like a sail.
Unbelieve.
By the way, Wilbur did most of the work. They don't know an it's gonna fly by itself was a big phrase of that's right. And do you know they were going to take advertising initially on the plane.
Oh good, Yeah, I didn't know.
I didn't include that.
Oh my god, Oh you missed it. That's what you need to I think pens Oil was may have been one. And also a pizza place. Yeah, always a pizza it's gonna be national. No, thank you. Yeah. By the way, they had their own troubles too getting the thing going, and that's it is a fact.
No, thank you, professor, thank you, thank.
You for telling me what that's my favorite part of.
The trouble getting that.
You know, that's why that's my favorite alleviation.
Discovery of aviation wasn't a snap, It wasn't a slam dunk Wilver and all the time.
Had had some use Peter and the professor or is that come first? Professor tilden't thank you. What I didn't know was we had shot a video. Brad Paysy shot a video on the outer banks. I'd never been there with. And what I noticed was I go, why aren't these houses new? And that's because those houses blow down for a couple of years. I mean they're gone, and they're
building above ground and they try. They have ceilings. The roofs of those houses have a metal pole into the ceiling holding them down because if not, it's gonna blow in. That's the other thing. Don the places we move to like New Orleans.
When I saw don't be pitching things, don't pitch a show, don't pitch.
It's called don't move here.
There you go. I like that.
Yes see I'm blinking if you know some morse code. I'm blinking with my eyes that we'll talk later.
Don the pleasure said, thank you so much.
Yeah, you were, You are a wonderful. Well, we'll catch up with you again in another six months.
You're kind of Okay, somebody else will be buried by that.
He'll be underground again. We don't often, you know you. I have to say you. I make a lot of fun of you. I want you to stand you.
Yep, do you? But you find the best people for our subjects. You really, you know what it was?
He was hard to find people. And Laurie knows this because Laurier works for ass Off than David too. In today's world, you got to be really careful because you got to vet people because they come up and they present themselves as experts or whatever, and then you go, oh, you got them on. And that almost happened to me in micro dosing. You know, we're going down that path, and I went, I don't want somebody an ayahuasca guide because I don't know their agenda. So you go to
the source. He is just fascinating and all of his stories are based on history, which makes it even that more interesting. We'll get to google him in a minute. But what's interesting is we started talking about the future, and I started. When I do these we research, you know, we start at a place and usually end up somewhere related to but bigger. And one of the headlines is the only way is down. Why underground urban development is
happening and they're doing it a lot of places. Helsinki is one of them where they have an underground city plan. They haven't done yet, but they're starting to do the urban development there. Sydney is constructing tunnels. They're looking down in Montreal, big shopping complex that's already below the surface. And what they're looking at is they don't know that they can do whole cities that way because that's a lot of real estate, but real estate above ground is
so big. But they have some cities now in Asia they're floating cities because if the sea levels are rising right and we're running out of room, you have floating cities and you can anchor them to shore with with bridges.
All the city when you're constantly nauseous.
I love it. That's not a bad thing. London underground underground is a pesticide free farm that they're doing in an old war bunker. Mexico City has a concept of pyramid shape constructions and stretches a full sixty five stories below the earth to do what to start building out actually for a habitat.
O Why pyramid just because because they're doing the shape for or whatever.
The low line which he was talking about in New York City. In Montreal, the largest subsradan complex in the world has been in use since the sixties and as a model for other cities, they got shopping centers, hotels, restaurants and metro Helsinki. Like I said, and then Laurie and I knew this because we were going to do an episode on a subtropolis. In Kansas City is below ground since nineteen sixty four. Sixteen hundred people work there.
It's eleven hundred acres. They have part of the cloud because it's so secure down there, and because as climate controlled automatically you don't have to worry about is underground. They have all these movies, movie storage underground. There Amsterdam underground parking for bikes, and like I said, Singapore, I've seen.
I saw the episode of Star Trek where they were people living underground and there were people living in the clouds. Nobody could live on the surface. They found a way to live in the clouds, and the people underground were not faring well. They wanted to be on the clouds. The machine more locking. They live in the whistle and they come up with those. Yes, all the underground people. They've never been happy down there. And you know why
you can't get reception. You can't get You're constantly going can you hear me? Now? Can you hear me? Now? Trying to wash it? Where you going to walk the dog? Where is that gonna go?
Point right? Yes?
Yes, take the dog out. There is no out. There's only you're going to go up right every hour and you never see not seriously, but you do you what do they do for sunlight? We can't live with.
There are some that they actually tunnel down where it's like a tube.
They do that.
That is one of the problems with.
I'm not getting a tan under the solo tube. So you know what I wanted to ask, Am I getting my vitamin D in the solo tube? If I stand there rinsing, I think, can I say, honey, I got it? It's another minute I'm getting my vitamin D from.
I wanted to do a solitube my haus. Does that work? It is? It leak?
Doesn't lea We have two of them and it does.
It really doesn't.
I got to tell you it lights up a room. Can they do that with.
A solo tube? That opens up to to get air. I'm not sure you have to investigation so much like Don Wildman, Why do I have to know? Investigate? Yeah, I'm working on foundation stuff.
You want me to know.
Here's the things that they're talking about though in researching this, which is really interesting. Right now with all the flooding and the fires, we address them, and I think everybody will agree in incremental increment ways, we're going to do this. We're going to do that.
Right.
We're not looking at like we need to move New Orleans three hundred miles because it's going to be unsustainable.
Right. And also as the tornadoes and the hurricanes were starting to talk about become.
More devastating, I started to talk about that we have to do that. We have to look at also fault of photovolc vault X, you know, the son they're thinking about nuclear again because our generation against it, because a three mile island, because cows is reading lamps. The next generation not so worried about it, and they think they can get nuclear under control, that it can be that and wind and photo of okay and all of that. It
re envisioned in a new way. And remember we talk about AI and we talk about CHAT, GPT and all of that. They're talking about construction that does itself, with equipment that repairs itself, where every item would be a small and that's going to move us under that's going to move us further into another direction of how to.
Live of unemployed.
No, it'll be it'll be new employment, a new way to look at under.
Well, how is it new employee?
I don't know. Don't give me that job too. What do you whany you see you drag this into an area that makes me crazy. I liked when we were building underground. If it puts people to work with building people, we're gonna okay, guy, he said, the big drill, the big drill with the thing that takes a guy to work it. One of the when the stuff comes off, then all the garbage that dirt the.
Rocks, somebody's got to.
Stuff all that old school what how all the new stuff that you were scared about that, I'm not so scared about it. It's helping in medical and it's helping in Journalism's helping is going to be part of our future.
So you know what that means? You know what all those unemployed people are going to start to do podcasting. They're all gonna be.
No, no, no, they're doing it already. Everyone's done a podcast already.
Basically everyone who's currently unemployed that is doing a podcast.
I had a gig. You think i'd be doing this. I get a call once a week from a relative, going, you're not going to believe who's doing the podcast? Your cousin Leonard just starting. I hang, I just hang up now, so before we go and get Google. The one thing I didn't talk about is New York City has about two million rats. There we go. That's what we didn't talk about here in these places.
I know there's two million rats down there because there's one million, one million rats.
But New York City is not the number one city, No, Laurie, do you know what the city is the number one city for rodents, for rats? David?
Do you know? I know? But you told me so.
I won't give it away.
I know previously. Oh yeah, it's cheating.
Number one city. If you're listening, you can be proud. Number one. Boston, you're number one, Number two, Philadelphia, number three. Yeah, New York City. But you had you have a sense of what to do with the rats. That was unique. Because they got a rat zar.
Well, here's the thing. And by the way, how do you apply for that job? We're on zip recruiter. What do you put in?
Can you imagine? Okay, you're applying for the job and I'm the mirror. Yeah, so we'd like to what are your qualifications?
I'm your guy, Maya, I'm your guy. First of all, I hate rats. They're always telling on you, you know.
They're always what do we call it, ratting you out there, retting you out?
I hate them. I hate them.
So what would you do? What are your qualifications?
First? What am I qualifications?
What have you done? I got rid of a lot of stuff, don't you worry. I know how to get rid of stuff. Okay, all right, all right, don't ask me any questions about that part of my resume.
But what would I do with the rats? First of all, we're thinking about it the whole wrong way, every buddy. For millions of years, we've been trying to get rid of the rats. Get rid of the rats, push them out.
Pied Piper Hammeling, played some sort of flute, took them into the ocean.
Yeah, and what happened the next year? There was no piper and there was still rats. They can't get rid of the rats, but rats of You know why we can't get rid of them. They're very intelligent. They're smart.
They're smart, and they can learn, and they can pass their learning down from generation to generation. So I say, put them to work. I listened to your podcast. We talked about a goldfish that could drive. If we can teach a goldfish to drive, we can teach rats to do anything.
Nannies, right, pushing a carriage? Push a carriage, of course.
Hey I just ordered pizza, right, del you go? Of course, traffic cops, we don't need people standing.
The only thing these rats can.
Find a landmine out in the field. You don't think they can read a light to come this way about? Go on, school bus driver. Let's put them to work. Here's the one thing that knocks you out there. Yeah, they're not smart enough to avoid being in laboratories and having dissected. So you know what they are smart enough to do? Apply to Peter for that kind there, Googlehind.
What do we got?
Put the rats to work would be a unique plant?
Put them?
Yeah?
Yeah, a few things.
Uh.
Number one, the original Manhattan shoreline at the at the southern tip of the island was at Pearl Street, about three blocks Inland.
I know that street, yes, so really no, really, also places to wrestle gators.
How do you do that? Really? How do you do that?
The man is in Florida. If anyone's gonna know, they.
Well, I do some moon lighting, but I didn't want to get into that today. But traditionally the the gator wrestling has been a spectator activity. But there is a place called Gator's Reptile Park where you can actually get in there for one hundred bucks and wrestle a.
Gator worth every.
Strangely enough, though, it's in Colorado, So there you go.
Oh all right.
You know what I always wonder about with those when you read that the guy went to Cluise with his wife and may have murdered a pursure of this is a perfect place to take your spouse. Let's do it again. Let's do it again all day on. It's two hundred, have a great time. Forget the hour. I'm behind the two hours team as a team, right, we already putted dolphins.
Wow, that's fantastic. DA and I.
Have a couple of statistics because we're talking about underground a phenomenon. So I thought, like, what are some of the more phenomenal structures that that we have and things that men have made underneath? Yes, we're a long underground tunnel. Is the Gothard base in the Swiss Alps that is thirty five miles.
Under the mountain range? There?
Wow, it's Yes, it's an incredible feat. But the largest man made underground structure ever built, guesses and.
Guesses, the largest underground structure ever. It's gonna be some sort of cathedral like thing. I'm guessing, like a religious Is it a religious based structure.
Of some kind? No, it is it? Is it a burial place structure of something? You're getting closer, you know, it would be great.
It'd be great if it was a giant, giant, prehistoric man cave, like where a guy would just hang out to watch sports.
You should have seen the flat screen on this.
Yes, So where and where does it give us a hint?
Where is it? China? Oh, it's in China. The largest underground structure is in China. And it is a.
Gender neutral lushroom.
You're never going to get it off because it was actually created by the Ming dynasty in the fifteenth century.
So it's a giant room from ming vases. Ming vases it was.
It's called and this is a very fancy name, the city water supply system.
It's in Beijing, China. How big it is three.
Hundred and thirty three thousand square feet and extends over thirty one miles in length.
Jeez, what's it going for? What do you hear? The popular tourist destination? And here just one last one before before you get rid of me.
The deepest man made hole is in the Kola super Deep borehole in Mermansk Oblast, Russia, of course. And that it's forty thousand, two hundred and thirty feet that's over seven.
And a half miles down. Wow, it is.
The deepest artificial extreme point ever ever done. And for perspective, to get to reach the Earth's core is three thousand, nine and fifty nine miles.
So why did they do that? Why did they bore that? What was the intent?
They were bored? Are you serious? They just said, David?
Please? Like no, I just called David doesn't know the answer that.
I believe it was a mining. I believe it had to do with mining, okay, like nuclear Waiste down there or something and pour some cementaly.
You know what, in the future. It's really interesting. You were trying to get rid of waste and it is one of the things they're looking at doing, which is fascinating. So they were injecting it and they realized they could cause smaller, small earthquakes. Yeah, so they're now they're now playing with areas that get an eight point earthquake or ten point earthquake if they can start injecting its things into those areas to release some of the pressure in tension.
So those areas will only get three or four point earthquakes and not eights anymore. Well, if they get one, well that's not a good then we're destroyed. But I'm just saying that they're looking at really, I mean, that's the this is the first technology where we play with technology. Well, we don't know what the possible rem We wouldn't have a hardline if you didn't like technology. You wouldn't have airplanes if you didn't like technology. Oh, I would have them because somewhere stifled.
All right, Yeah, now, no, thank you everybody.
Another episode, Googlehind, thank you, Laurie, thank you.
Next week we go underground. Don Will is from way down down.
By the way against our will. So thank thank you. Anything else we want to follow jation O Yes.
Indeed, Ladies and gentlemen, if you like to follow us specifically, you can go to our website really no really dot com. You can leave us a really of your very own, something that makes you say really no really. If we use it on the show, we will mention your name and maybe send you a hat. Please listen. We drop new episodes every Tuesday. You can go the iHeart app,
the Apple app, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you follow us on YouTube, and we hope you do, please remember too late and subscribe and we will be back next Tuesday with a brand new episode. I can't wait to see you then, really no really, thanks David, Thanks LORI, thank you really no really